Transparency is a condition of passing or seeing through. Transparency is connection and continuity; it is a dialectic between revealing and concealing, as well as between seeing and reading. A transparent medium, substance, or matter allows, permits, and invites light, air, and sight to penetrate through. Transparency relates to diaphaneity, translucency, and layering. Translucency can be defined as the condition existing within the continuum between opacity and transparency, between the two polarities of obscurity and clarity, between solid and void. Translucency is where light sifts, filters and penetrates through the successive additive effects of layered, stacked, overlapped or superimposed planes, glazed surfaces, films, or veils. The filtering and penetrating effect of light through translucency achieves a layered glow, where natural light passes through, slows down, softens, bleeds and diffuses from one space to the next, from exterior to the interior, and through different layers of the interior, creating a superimposed overlapping penetrative effect, bringing daylight further and deeper into the space.

Rowe and Slutzky makes a distinction between two types, modes, or conditions of transparency in their seminal essay on Transparency: Literal & Phenomenal. A literal transparency, that is, an actual or real transparency that is seen, is a quality inherent to substance or matter, such as in mesh screens, translucent walls, and a phenomenal transparency, that is, an implied or seeming mode of transparency that is read, is a quality inherent in the spatial or volumetric organization (Rowe & Slutzky, 1982).

Two or more transparent figures overlapping each other produces a contradiction or ambiguity of spatial dimensions; simultaneously seeming to advance or recede, appearing closer or further, where space continuously fluctuates and oscillates. These transparent planes, objects, or surfaces interpenetrate each other. Transparency permits a simultaneous perception or conception of various spatial locations (Gyorgy Kepes in Rowe & Slutzky, 1982).

Transparency is the layering of planes and/or the layering of spaces, the layering of surfaces and/or the layering of volumes, producing spatial contiguity and continuity between successive or sequential advancing-receding series of strata or spaces.

Perforous Screens: Filtering & Dematerialization

Photos of AD1 Physical Model by Moe Kheir, 2010

Filtering and diffusing light through perforous patterned screens or facades, creating a myriad of patterned shadow effects as the sun changes its position during the course of a day. Henry Plummer describes Atomization as the sifting or filtering of light through a porous screen (Plummer, 2009). Dematerialization is the dissolution of matter through or by light, where thick, heavy, and massive, construction or cladding appears to be dissolved, eaten, or consumed by light itself.

Mesh screens or other finely patterned porous facades have the capability to disintegrate objects into light and air. Screens could be more porous or less porous according to the desired or necessary amount of solar exposure. The control of certain parameters, such as the proportion of solid to void, the relationship between the opaque surface and the porous openings or holes can achieve a seemingly gauzy and mysterious, yet luminous and brilliant, experience of the screen. Atomized illumination through the fine screens of wood lattice, metal mesh, or other porous surface makes the view outside less clear, less solid, and instead more disintegrative, more vaporous. One only gets a glimpse of the outside through the perforated mesh of fine dots.

The filtered light gets splintered and scattered across the surface of a moiré patterned screen of holes. Light corrodes and dissolves the solidity of mass. Physical mass seems to be pulverized in an intricate interplay of perforation size, surface finish and lighting levels to achieve a condition of lightness and ambiguity in the balance between light and shadow, transparency and opacity of the façade, as well as materiality and ethereality.

The perforous screen like the diaphanous veil or the layered transparent planes simultaneously reveals and conceals, connects and divides in a mode of contiguous discontinuity. Plummer in his description of pulverized light mentions,

“Light becomes caught in screens, sometimes fleetingly…the screens seem to intermittently turn solid, translucent, or transparent, and the next moment dematerialize into nothing. The real wall and building mass appear to fade away, leaving behind a mesmerizing sensation of energy that seems to vibrate….boundaries slip out of focus, at one moment coming into shape and the next moment empty yet loaded with energy” (Plummer, 2009).

Indirect Daylighting: Canalization & Formlessness

Photos of AD1 Sectional Model by Cat Doo, 2010

Indirect daylighting explores the articulation of the formlessness of light. There is no clear boundary between what is lit and not lit; the distinction between light and non-light is undecidable, indeterminate, and ambiguous. The boundary is blurred. Light can be explored to enhance form, make form more pronounced, or alternatively, light can be manipulated to dematerialize form, eat away at the geometry, and make form less distinct. Light is captured by the indirect lighting mechanisms, whether they are carved voids, fingers of light, or channeled networks, and is transported yet transformed as the illumination gets redelivered into the interior space.

Plummer refers to the Canalization of light as being the channeling of light through hollow mass, where artificial routes, labyrinths, and tunnels are carved out for natural forces to penetrate the inner depths of a building. Formless light is given a memorable character whereby the radiation and energy from the sky is collected and sculpted.The flow of light is conducted through daylit voids, cavities, and porous masses, while distributing yet moulding the illumination as it hits the surface (Plummer, 2009).

Washes of natural light arrives from the ‘spaces between,’ from the interstitialspaces formed between the detached wall and the wall proper, in the case of indirect side lighting, or the detached ceiling panel and its adjoining ceiling, in the case of indirect top or zenithal lighting. The inner linings of these detached screens or baffles can be made reflective or coloured, which in turn will have an effect on the redirected light. In the various modes of indirect lighting, such as slots, tubes, conduits, light shafts, light funnels and scoops or some other labyrinthine configuration, the incident light arrives mysteriously as it is reflected or redirected from the inner surfaces of the light baffle, concealing the window or opening. Hence, a ‘sourceless’ light, a light of no apparent or clear origin. (Plummer, 2009).

The opening of light is concealed and hidden away from view, the channel or shaft forces the light to bend, to reflect, and to become more diffused while entering the space. These concealed light sources and hidden apertures can help choreograph or direct a journey, a promenade architecturale, whereby the indirect sources of light are points of command leading one further and deeper into a building.

Filtering & Equilibrium: Establishing a Continuum between Polarities; The Experience of the Topological Unbroken Line

The building, a geophysics institute, rises out in a cantilevered bridge-like structure from the site; where the private wing is submerged, and the public wing is extended out. The space between is a Moebius-like mode of interlocking geometry, strongly elucidating the principle of the topological continuum or the unbroken line. This middle zone is also the entry.

Perforous: perforations, filtering and diffusing light through perforous screens, moiré effects, unbroken brokenness of the view beyond. Seen in the facades, refer to sections, renders and model.

Dematerialization: dissolve matter through or by light, the thick and heavy concrete (with limestone mix) cladding appears to be dissolved, eaten, or consumed by light itself. The natural light is filtered again through the timber slits, a double filtering. This dematerialization is reversed at night, emitting pores of artificial lights.

Equilibrium: the act of balancing, of equalizing, equivalences, finding the middle point or medius/mediation, the act of making equal, connecting while separating, made explicit through the buildings formal configuration on site, in the earth and out of the earth, through the interlocking gesture between private and public sectors, and through the perforous façade linking exterior and interior.

Polarities: equalising the binary opposites or dualities, such as light and heavy, thick and thin, light and dark, under and over, inside and outside, private and public, etc

Continuum: to continue, to extend, to continue and extend without disruption or break, ie unbrokeness, unbroken continuity, an unbroken movement and dynamism.

Transparency literal and phenomenal, from the macro to the micro, reiteration of the initial layering precept through successive levels of shifts and slides. The building bends around the contours forming a double direction – dual axis of superimposing linear block volumes, explicating the fundamental notions of the double axial configuration seen as an underlying order of stratification and collision in planning while constituting interpenetrative spaces and allowing for a successive array of various modes of overlapping, layering and stacking, clearly evident in the conceptual studies carried through to the multiplicity of investigative overlapping of the transitional states of transparency, translucency and opaque surfaces in the resolved building.

The spectroscopic institute is situated remotely from the main observatory hill, due to its particular programmatic requirements. The duality of the axis aided to separate while connect the private and the public zones, both meeting at the space of union.

Junctions, collisions, and overlaps occur throughout the scheme, seen from both the inside and the outside. The junctions are expressed through the articulation of threshold moments and the overlapping aids in the provision of continuum effects, such as a delayed entry.

The disruptions, offsets and shifts suggest a strong sense of dynamism and movement within a clearly static scheme grounded to site. The project implies dynamism and movement; static movement, dynamic stability, unmoving movement, seen in the overlapping, disruptions, slides and shifts of the volume, surfaces and materials constituting a depth of façade.

This dynamism is elucidated in the layered glow, interpenetration of space and surface working with the interpenetration of light by means of the overlapping of glass panels as well as spaces divided by glazed portions of walls, where the glow of natural light bleeds and diffuses from one space to the next, creating a successive superimposed overlapping lighting effect, effectively bringing the exterior, that is daylight, further into and deeper into the interior, an act of multi-penetration.

Indirect Light as Points of Visual Interest to direct a Labyrinthine Journey through Geological Voids

The scheme is designed mainly from the inside out, carving a cavernous geological narrative through the site lead by indirect glows around the corners of circulation spaces. The project has extensively considered a multiplicity of indirect lighting mechanisms for both artificial and natural light. This geological physics institute is situated to the west of Lake Tekapo and has expansive views out, as seen in the café and courtyard spaces. The long horizontality of the building is made evident by the narrative or journey which underpins the project, whilst having a sense of being firmly grounded to the immediate context, with a footpath mediating the transition between the building the ground.

The labyrinth relates directly to the sequence, the journey or the narrative, made explicit in the planning, the section and most importantly the sectional model. The labyrinth works on the principle of the indirect light cast onto the leading walls suggesting further progress deeper into the building, these act as points of visual interest directing one’s gaze and movement.

Articulating the formless, that is, natural light, with carefully considered concealed apertures within the architectural formal gesture is the main guiding principle. The formless form concept is made explicit in the blurred boundary between the indirect light and the physical form of the opening.

The multiple shifts in plane and volume in both plan, section, exterior and interior is a clear result of the careful consideration and articulation of the labyrinthian geological-cavernous journey principle.

The building is entered from the southern higher end, where one descends into darkness, and continues to find his or her way through a meandering route of successive heavy geological spaces where at the end of this journey one is thrusted out to the light and airy open courtyard space of the offices sector, which is at the bottom northern end of the scheme.

The choice of materiality elucidates the narrative though shifts in plane, horizontality, color and tonality. The introduction of the timber detached panels provides a natural contrast to the excessive use of stone, while concealing artificial lights useful in expressing the texture and relief of the stone surface behind.